NCRI - Three prisoners convicted of drug trafficking have been hanged at a prison in city of Bam,
reports from Iran have revealed.
Another 11 men have been transferred to another location in Qezelhesar Prison, in Karaj, for imminent execution and they have been deprived of all visits before the death sentences are carried out. They are among thousands of prisoners on death row in Iran, where 30 inmates were hanged in the past two weeks alone, including six in public in Shiraz on April 16.
The soaring execution rate comes as panicking rulers try to suppress mounting public anger at poverty, unemployment and food shortages ahead of the June presidential election.
MEXICO CITY – Six
bodies were found by police Tuesday in a community outside General Enrique
Estrada, a city in the north-central Mexican state of Zacatecas, state officials
said.
“It was learned that members of a criminal organization left six
dead bodies in the community of Felix Uresti Gomez,” the Zacatecas state
government said.
State police heading to the city of Rio Grande, where a
law enforcement operation was planned, made the grisly discovery.
The
bodies were dumped by the bus stop in the community, which is on Federal Highway
45 on the way from Fresnillo to Zacatecas city.
The victims – five men
and a woman – have not been identified, officials said.
“A message was
left along with the bodies, noting the fight between two rival criminal groups
with a presence in the state,” the state government said.
Zacatecas, like
other states in northern Mexico, has been affected by a turf war between the
Gulf and Los Zetas drug cartels.
After several years on the payroll of
the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas, considered Mexico’s most violent criminal
organization, went into the drug business on their own account and now control
several lucrative territories.
The criminal organizations have been
fighting for control of smuggling routes into the United States since
2010.
The war on drugs launched by former President Felipe Calderon, who
was in office from 2006 to 2012, left about 70,000 people dead, or an average of
32 per day, in Mexico, officials say.
Calderon, of the conservative
National Action Party, or PAN, deployed thousands of soldiers and Federal Police
officers across the country to fight drug cartels. EFE
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – A previously deported
illegal alien from Mexico was charged with smuggling a group of 14 illegal
aliens that resulted in seven being killed and one injured in critical
condition.
These charges were announced last Thursday by U.S. Attorney
Kenneth Magidson, Southern District of Texas, along with Brian M. Moskowitz,
special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE)
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Houston.
The indictment
returned on April 18 charges Idelfonso Garcia-Benitez, 20, of Michoacan, Mexico,
with one count of conspiring to transport aliens, 14 counts of transporting an
alien, and one count of illegally re-entering the United States after previously
being deported.
According to documents filed of record in the case, on
March 20, 2013, at about 11 p.m., a Kingsville Police Department officer
observed a pickup truck violate state traffic law by disregarding a stop sign.
The officer attempted to conduct a traffic stop on this vehicle, but the vehicle
fled, leading to a brief pursuit.
The driver crashed into a vehicle
barrier on General Cavazos Avenue in Kleberg County that had been deployed by
the Kingsville Naval Air Station. A total of 15 illegal aliens were discovered
at the scene. Of those, Garcia-Benitez was identified as the driver. Seven were
killed and one remains in critical condition.
“The tragic loss of life in
this case shows the very real risks that people face when they put themselves in
the hands of a smuggler,” said Moskowitz. “Those responsible for illegally
moving people into and through our country place their personal profit above
everything else. They are driven by greed with little regard for the health and
well-being of their human cargo, which can be a deadly
combination.”
Garcia-Benitez was arrested at the scene of the accident.
He has been in custody since that time, where he will remain pending further
criminal proceedings. He is expected to appear for an arraignment hearing before
U.S. Magistrate Judge Owsley early next week.
If convicted,
Garcia-Benitez faces up to 20 years in prison and a possible $250,000
fine.
This case is being investigated by HSI and prosecuted by Assistant
U.S. Attorney Jeffrey S. Miller.
An indictment is a formal accusation of
criminal conduct, not evidence. A defendant is presumed innocent unless
convicted through due process of law.
CAIRO (The New York Times) — The French Embassy in Libya was struck by what was reported to be a car bomb on Tuesday, injuring two French guards, according Libyan media accounts and French authorities who called the attack “odious.”
The assault was described as the first of its kind in the Libyan capital since the revolt beginning in 2011 that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, but it was not the first attack on a diplomatic building in Libya.
Last September in the eastern city of Benghazi, militants struck at two American facilities, killing the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans. Last month, Libyan security officials said they had arrested two men in the kidnapping near Benghazi of five British humanitarian activists, at least two of them women who had been sexually assaulted.
On Tuesday, Reuters quoted residents living near the French diplomatic compound in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, as saying they heard two explosions in the early morning. “We think it was a booby trapped car,” a French Embassy official told Reuters. “There was a lot of damage and there are two guards wounded.” The attack raised worries among Tripoli residents that the security situation there was unraveling further.
Since the fall of Colonel Qaddafi, Tripoli had generally been seen as safer than Benghazi, which many foreigners avoid. But the country as a whole is viewed by outsiders as potentially perilous with many weapons in the hands of citizens and militias beyond government control. Many foreigners in Tripoli take elaborate security precautions. The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, was quick to issue a statement in Paris calling Tuesday’s attack odious. Mr. Fabius said he condemned the attack with the utmost vigor and said French and Libyan authorities would make every effort to shed light on the circumstances surrounding the attack.
The assault came a day after the French Parliament voted to extend the French military deployment in Mali, but there was no indication whether the attack was linked to that development. No group immediately took responsibility for the blast.
PANAMA CITY – Panama’s Senan aero-naval
force seized 1.5 tons of cocaine and arrested four Colombians in an operation
carried out in the Caribbean Sea 12 nautical miles from El Porvenir, authorities
said Monday.
The suspects were traveling in a speed boat that was spotted
early Saturday morning by a helicopter and then intercepted by two patrol boats,
Senan chief Belsio Gonzalez told a press conference.
The drug shipment
was divided into 59 packets and authorities are not ruling out the possibility
that it could be linked to the cartel operating in Colombia’s Gulf of Uraba, he
said.
Gonzalez said that the intelligence departments of both the
Colombian army and police have been contacted about the drug shipment.
So
far in 2013, Senan has seized more than 10 tons of illegal drugs, half of it
cocaine. EFE
LA PAZ – Bolivian police seized 5,000 live baby caimans
in an operation against animal trafficking in the oriental province of Santa
Cruz, which borders on Brazil and Paraguay, the provincial government said
Saturday.
Dealers had shipped the baby caimans in trucks to the city of
Santa Cruz from the village of San Matias on the Brazilian border, an area rich
in wetlands and animal diversity.
Santa Cruz Environment Secretary Manilo
Roca said that the baby caimans of the yacare species, a medium to small sized
crocodilian, have now been cared for and fed and could be returned to their
habitat.
Confiscated from the same trucks were 500 caiman skins of
various sizes, with a total value of $18,000.
Roca said that if the
owners of the shipment do not have authorization to engage in this kind of
commerce, they will be tried for illegal trafficking of a species that can only
be sold under a management plan with special permits.
NCRI - The Iranian regime's has hanged four prisoners in western city of Kermanshah on Monday.
The Iranian regime's judiciary said the victims were hanged in the morning in the city's Dizel-abad prison. During the past week more than two dozen prisoners have been executed in cities across Iran. At least six prisoners were hanged in public.
Among the victims there were four citizens of Afghanistan.